There is a continuing increase in the density of vehicles traveling the world's roadways. This increase raises the probability of vehicles colliding with objects. Simultaneously, a need to improve the safety of vehicle operations, as it currently stands, by reducing the occurrences of vehicles colliding with stationary and moving objects (such as roadside obstacles and other vehicles) is present. Motor vehicle safety devices have continuously improved over the years and have made driving a safer experience. Many of these safety devices, such as seat belts and air bags are designed to protect occupants in the event of a crash. Other devices, such as anti-lock braking systems are intended to assist the driver's performance to prevent a crash. Such systems assume an alert and competent driver, but this is not always the case. A driver may not be fully alert or capable of making appropriate decisions for any number of reasons. For example, these include drowsiness, talking on a cellular phone, changing the radio stations, dealing with unruly children, mental fatigue, age, medical conditions and the like.
Driving is a complex task and requires a range of cognitive and psychomotor abilities that include memory, judgment, motor control and speed, decision-making, and attention. These skills are necessary for safe driving and often decline as we age. Aging presses the issue of driving competence. Driving places demands on attention, memory, problem solving and information processing, the cognitive faculties that decline with aging. Older drivers crash at a rate second only to the youngest drivers. Older driver involvement in fatal crashes is projected to increase 155% by 2030, accounting for 54% of the total projected increase in fatal crashes among all drivers. As the population ages and the number of older drivers increases, declining driver competence becomes an urgent public health problem and a challenge to recognize impaired driving ability in the elderly.
One means for reconciling these factors is to evaluate a driver's operational performance over time to determine if the driver has lost the capability of operating the vehicle safely. Whenever a driver is responsible for operating a motor vehicle, it is critical that the driver be capable of demonstrating basic cognitive and motor skills at a level that will assure the safe operation of the vehicle. A number of conditions can impair a driver's ability to perform the basic cognitive and motor skills that are necessary for the safe operation of a motor vehicle. It is desirable to evaluate a driver's ability to identify hazardous conditions and correctly react to those conditions while operating a motor vehicle.
Typically, people whose driving capabilities are questioned are evaluated by the Department of Motor Vehicles or an occupational therapist. This requires a human evaluator to ride with the subject and evaluate them based on some criteria. However, road test courses and evaluator training have not been standardized. An evaluator's background and training are variable. This introduces subjectivity and potential bias in that not all road tests are standardized and one cannot control variables such that all subjects will experience the same test or such that all will face specific events that could be a hazard to them. For example, not all drivers would be faced with a pedestrian walking into the path of the vehicle or a car running red light when the driver approaches the intersection with a green light. Further, road tests have relied on the expert opinion of the examiners in which errors are determined either as driving errors that violate the rules of the road or by the judgment of the examiner as to what constitutes an important error. However, some errors are typical of experience drivers (e.g., rolling stop at a stop sign) and may not be relevant to competence decisions. Finally, road tests can be costly and dangerous when the driver is very incompetent.
Laboratory measures, such as neuropsychological tests, have been used to infer poor driving skills based upon poor test performance, but have met with mixed success. While poorer global cognitive performance is associated with impaired driving, the specificity of the neuropsychological measures has been limited. Measures of visual attention and executive function appear to be the most promising of the in-clinic measures. Accident history (often based upon accidents per million miles) has been used to examine whether certain populations are at greater risk for on-road accidents. While this provides a valid measure of “real world” risk, it does not inform individual risks and may over- or underestimate risk depending upon the driving environs.
Lastly, the emergence of driving simulators has provided an opportunity to evaluate under addressed skills such as accident avoidance and navigational abilities, and to experimentally delineate the components of driving performance. Concerns remain regarding their realism and usability in various populations. Fully interactive driving simulator system are also available that puts drivers behind the wheel before they drive on the highway. These simulators provide 3-screens with an expanded field of view for realism. Alternatively, single-screen system are also available that allow drivers to replicate the actions necessary to develop and reinforce driving skills and habits. These typically include a car seat, steering wheel, accelerator, brake pedals, desktop, console, or customized driving controls; regular, wide field-of-view and head-mounted display options; and validated high-fidelity, non-linear, vehicle and tire models. While there is a range of technological sophistication, some automatically record crashes, reaction time, speed, tickets and response to tasks of divided attention, but these simulators do not score and still require a human evaluator to render an opinion as in the road testing.
It would be desirable to have a system that combines a simulator with a method to automatically evaluate a person's driving capabilities and render an outcome of pass or fail without the need for a trained observer to evaluate driver's performance. Accordingly, the present invention is directed to these, as well as other, important ends.